Tumor antigen detection in human carcinoma

A search for antigenic substances distinctive for human adenocarcinoma has been made. Tumors have been investigated by examining the specificities of antisera produced in rabbits to certain mucinous materials. Fluids were collected from benign, human, pseudomucinous cyst-adenomas of the ovary. These cystic fluids were used for prolonged antigenic stimulation in New Zealand White female rabbits. The antisera from these rabbits were reacted by the gel double diffusion technique with saline extracts of normal and cancerous tissues of humans. The antisera, after absorption with human serum, produced a characteristic precipitation band when reacted with extracts of colonic adenocarcinoma tissue and not with extracts of normal colonic tissue from the same patient. Other extracts from adenocarcinomas of lung, breast, kidney, ovary, and stomach did not produce the characteristic precipitation band when reacted with the rabbit antisera. It appears that cancer of the colon produces an antigen common to mucinous cystadenoma fluid of the ovary. It is postulated that this antigenic substance is an altered mucin. Evidence indicated that this tumor-specific substance is present in all cancerous colonic tissues and is identical in all patients with cancer of the colon. It is suggested that materials present in adenocarcinoma of the colon may be distinctive without being unique and that this possibility offers a future diagnostic technique to effect earlier detection of adenocarcinoma of the colon in humans..